The powerful admirers and protectors who welcomed Leonardo to Milan with open arms could shield him from the annoying requests of Pier Soderini but not from the consequences of his own dreams of glory. Waiting for him in the city, which was now under French rule, was the unresolved question of The Virgin of the Rocks, which the Franciscans still demanded. New legal proceedings were underway, although on this occasion the French governor leant more heavily on the Franciscans, with the result that they, too, became more lenient in their requests. Leonardo had to agree to paint a new altarpiece for them. We know from the test carried out on the preparatory drawing that the master, assisted only by one of the de Predis brothers, initially tried to vary the painting by using a new drawing of the Virgin in adoration; but they must have given up very soon, and therefore, for convenience, they made a replica of the altarpiece that had played such a role in establishing Leonardo’s reputation. There was one important alteration, however: the angel who supported the little Christ child with its left hand no longer pointed at the young Saint John with its right, because to the Franciscans that gesture seemed unseemly and inappropriate in a painting intended to celebrate the Immaculate Virgin.23 The simplification of this gesture led to a general simplification of the whole composition, in which Leonardo’s intervention was undoubtedly much more limited than in the first version.
On the other hand, at this time Leonardo had lost all interest in painting, which he regarded as an annoying obstacle to his own scientific projects. His one wish was to finish that painting as quickly and with as little effort as possible; he looked upon it as a tiresome legal duty. For a start, it was a painting from which he had nothing more to expect. The shadows are no longer painted with that delicacy that aroused wonder in the first copy, and even the rocks behind the figures are markedly simplified – so much so that a modern expert on geology observed that, while in the first version of The Virgin the rock formations have the consistency of real life really observed, in the second version the rocks give no sense of reality; they simply look like an abstract catalogue of geological types, a juxtaposition of landscape motifs with no real logic, like those that often appeared in contemporary paintings from central Italy. The flora, too, is simplified: one need only look at the incongruous palm that appears to the right of the Virgin and compare it with the beautiful, sophisticated representation in the first version, modulated by glints of light. The glimpse of the landscape overlooking the Alpine lake has lost the hazy denseness of the spring-like atmosphere and its contrasting lines and colours are delineated with too much candour.
Leonardo’s hand and his underdrawing contribute significantly to making this a masterpiece of Renaissance painting, but its pictorial details do not bear comparison with the first version because the drawing alone is not enough to re-create the miraculous atmosphere rendered in that version through chromatic harmonies and gradients [sfumature] of shadows. The perfect and natural spatial organization of the first painting is modified in the second by the rather incongruous position of the angel, who is no longer between the Virgin and the Christ child, but seems to stay behind her left arm. Although the drawing is the same in both, it is worth noting how much lack of care about shadows can alter the spatiality of the painting. It is the perfect calibration of light that gives credibility to the space in Leonardo’s paintings.
The entire painting seems to have been done, if not in a hurry, then certainly in a simplified manner. The transitions between light and shade are not as gradual as in the first version, and their contrasts are so marked that the parts left in shadow almost disappear. No secondary lights can be seen – those reflected lights that brought to life the parts left in shadow and defined them in a golden half-light. These remarks also serve to show that, although Leonardo certainly played a role in refining the final surfaces of the painting, the preponderant contribution by de Predis gives it a different feel, stylistically backdating it to the century that had just closed. Not only are the borders of the shadows sharp and stiff, as Leonardo feared, but the features are described using calligraphic lines that had completely vanished from his painting.
Leonardo was tired, and the painting is proof of his tiredness. His enthusiasm had turned elsewhere. One autumn evening in 1503 he had triumphantly noted that he had finally solved the problem of squaring the circle, a problem about which the world was no more concerned then than later. As has already been said, the problem had no real solution and never would have, but Leonardo could not resist the attraction of this logical puzzle, and his desire to redeem himself in the eyes of the world, of academics in particular, was such that he devoted himself to the question for months and years. In this way he was deluding himself that, by solving the problem, he had attained, if not surpassed, the greatest mathematical minds he had discovered through his books.
There seemed to be no bounds to his intellectual recklessness. Shortly after that announcement, it must have been Luca Pacioli – who moved to Florence in 1503 – who convinced him that he had been wrong, and Leonardo resigned himself (perhaps) to abandoning mathematical problems. Now, having returned to Milan, he embraced another extravagant dream: a Treatise on Anatomy, which would have at least 120 chapters and thousands of drawings. It was a project on which he had been working for years, on and off. With the guarantee of royal protection and with the support of the governor of Milan, the artist thought that he had found the necessary conditions in which to publish at least a part of his projects. He himself was beginning to realize that the accumulated material was becoming unmanageable: with hundreds of codices, thousands of notes, and tens of thousands of drawings, he could no longer make sense of it himself. The chaos to which he aimed to bring order was swallowing him, like sinking sands, and as the years passed his energy waned. As he approached sixty, he had not managed to finish anything he had started.
His willingness to serve the king through painting remained purely theoretical, because from the moment he arrived in Milan his sole objective was to publish his treatises, at long last. The favourable attitude and willingness of the government were encouraging. Once again, the old artist was granted an exclusive treatment that was unparalleled among his contemporaries. As we have seen, in a letter dated 20 April 1507, the governor returned to him the possessions he had received from Ludovico il Moro, which had subsequently been expropriated. Most importantly, these included the vineyard and the house located just outside Milan. It was Salai who benefited most from this restitution, because he now had full control over Leonardo’s property and life. Salai’s family moved into the house and his relatives administered the vineyard on his behalf rather than for the legitimate owner. D’Amboise was content to commission sketches from Leonardo for his planned pleasure villa just outside Milan. This was an opportunity for the artist to return to the old classical models, to which he referred by designing an island of Venus with a series of clever devices for water games from which water gushed out from below, as well as a fabulous water-powered mill devised as a giant fan for refreshing the air during the torrid Lombard summers.
So long as he limited himself to thinking up highly original equipment and devices, Leonardo was second to none, but when it came to building and putting these projects into practice his drive petered out and ground to a halt – especially now that his energy was beginning to fail. Fortune was on his side during those months (or he convinced himself that it was), because the king himself arrived in Milan at the end of April and the city was decked with triumphal displays and theatrical sets for which Leonardo could still produce stupendous ideas without too much effort. The city seemed to be reliving the era of Ludovico’s festivities, and the wind was blowing strongly in Leonardo’s favour. Thanks to the king’s arrival and to this possibility of making ephemeral structures [apparati] to which his genius was perfectly suited, Leonardo the old master was once more the brightest star in Milan; and he soon won back the favour of its most powerful citizens, including Girolamo Melzi, captain of the Milanese militia and the most influential protector of the city’s security. Moreover, there was something else about Melzi in which Leonardo was particularly interested: he had a handsome and intelligent son, Francesco, who had studied at the best universities of Lombardy and knew Greek and Latin, as well as having a sound knowledge of humanist disciplines.
Leonardo’s meeting with the young Francesco in the summer of 1507 persuaded him that he had found the key to resolving his problems. His intuition was indeed partly borne out by events. He found that the assistance of this well-educated and energetic youth was essential to the task of reorganizing his codices and of finally embarking on the publication of his ambitious treatise on anatomy, together with the one on painting. The reorganization of his manuscripts had to be postponed, though: yet again, events conspired against Leonardo precisely at the moment when he could have healed, once and forever, the wound opened by his father’s failure to recognize him. Yet the wound remained open through Leonardo’s own lack of children, because he regarded himself as living an eternal boyhood, and his irregular, illegitimate status imposed new prices for him to pay.
In July 1507 – as mentioned earlier – Francesco, the uncle who had loved and protected Leonardo in his childhood, died in Florence. When the testament was opened Ser Piero’s widow discovered that her brother-in-law had disobeyed the hateful orders given by Ser Piero, that Francesco’s possessions be left to Piero’s legitimate sons and that Leonardo be cut out of the inheritance. Leonardo’s half-brother, Giuliano, a notary like his father, not content with having inherited all of his father’s property, now impugned his uncle’s will too, wishing to expropriate the artist from the only inheritance he had received from the da Vinci family. After Ser Piero’s death, his legitimate sons seem to have taken over not only the family patrimony but also the tenacious desire to exclude their half-brother from the family line. This was, in every respect, moral and emotional persecution – of a man who had been a true descendant of the da Vinci family – for having lived not only with his uncle Francesco but also with his grandparents, Antonio and Lucia, people whom Ser Piero’s sons had never known.
Leonardo’s explosion of grief after the news of the litigation was uncontainable, and it blinded him. This exaggerated reaction can only be explained by the enormous pain caused by his father’s obstinate rejection, which had accompanied him throughout his life. At the very time when, without batting an eyelid, Leonardo let his cunning Salai take advantage of him and remove a property that was much more valuable than his uncle’s bequest, he decided that he could not and would not renounce Francesco’s inheritance. In both cases, the symbolic value of the assets was love: his love for Salai and the love he claimed from his paternal family. As before, his anger was expressed in a few incoherent notes in the Codex Atlanticus, which are difficult to interpret: ‘You disliked Francesco so heartily and let him enjoy yours in life. You wish me so much ill, and … Whom did you love more, Francesco or me?’ (fol. 571av). The only thing that emerges for certain is an indignation that hampers all reason and prevents us from understanding both the recipients of the letter and the intentions of its author.24
This scorn prompted him to turn to Louis XII, who proved to be very well disposed towards the artist. The king of France lowered himself to write a letter to the Signoria of Florence, on this occasion to solicit the rapid settlement of the dispute that had offended a man whom he held in high esteem, describing him in the letter as nostre paintre et ingenieur ordinaire. Still not satisfied after having bothered the king of France, Leonardo went to Florence in September 1507 and then turned to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este for help. In Florence everyone knew that he was under the protection of the French king and, as this was the period of the latter’s highest power in Italy, Soderini was obliged to treat Leonardo as a prince; he did not even dare to mention the painting that had been left unfinished on the walls of the Palazzo della Signoria.
The talent of his fellow citizens was proving to be one of Soderini’s greatest political problems. At around the same time the other fugitive, Michelangelo, had also returned to Florence, but not before having insulted Julius II; and his flight had become a full-blown diplomatic incident. Having quarried a large amount of marble at Carrara, Michelangelo had returned to Rome in spring 1506 only to find the pope rather unwilling to continue work on the tomb. Incensed at this treatment, Michelangelo left Rome without permission; the pope first tried unsuccessfully to send his horsemen after him, then on 8 July 1506 wrote an official letter to Pier Soderini, asking for Michelangelo’s return. Michelangelo, however, refused to move because he was frightened of the consequences, and Soderini spent the whole of July on tenterhooks. We can only imagine Soderini’s state of mind when he received a letter from the king of France, followed by one from the pope. Not only had these two artistic titans pocketed money from the government without finishing their work, but both were now laying siege to the Signoria through their protectors and appeared unwilling to let their prodigious talent blossom on the banks of the Arno.
This paradoxical situation would play into the hands of a young artist from Urbino who had only recently arrived in Florence: his name was Raffaello Sanzio, and he was the son of a painter and letterato much loved at the Montefeltro court. Indeed he introduced himself to Pier Soderini with a letter of recommendation from the duchess of Urbino. Raffaello was 24, was handsome, and had received such an impeccable artistic education that he was welcomed by all. No one could be more different in character either from the ineffectual master or from the untamed sculptor, who suffered from persecution mania and made himself disagreeable to everyone. Raphael had very clear ideas about his career and arrived in Florence with the intention of absorbing the most advanced research of the Florentine world and perhaps of looking specifically at the work of Leonardo, who was celebrated in all the printed books of the time as the greatest Italian master, alongside Perugino. Young Raphael had already burnt his boats with the latter by painting a Marriage of the Virgin that re-elaborated, almost obsequiously but in a much more contemporary style, a painting on an identical theme by the older artist from Umbria.
A feature of the youth’s work was his ability to assimilate and improve upon the research of better artists. He had arrived in Florence just before the two titans had hastened to leave it and, perhaps precisely because of their rapid exit, he had established himself in what was certainly not an easy market by offering an extremely valid alternative to the refined Florentine patrons. Before moving to Florence he had started by working on the Piccolomini Library in Siena in 1503–4 and had immediately been offered major commissions, the most important ones being the portraits of Angelo and Maddalena Doni, a family of rich bankers for whom Michelangelo himself had painted his Sacra famiglia. Whether (or not) he had seen the initial portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, about which Agostino Vespucci wrote in 1503, and whether (or not) he had been working autonomously on his research for female and male portraits, in these paintings Raphael forged a path that Florentine painters would find it difficult to follow. Blessed with a sweet style that transposed his models into an ideal and dreamlike world, the boy from Umbria was gifted with extraordinary manual skills and had mastered perfectly the new oil technique, blending colours with such softness that even Leonardo could not have done better.
Commissions continued to pour in for Raphael over the coming months, while he was working on two paintings that were destined to influence the future evolution of Italian painting: the Deposizione Baglioni, for a noble family from Perugia, and the Madonna del baldacchino, for the Dei family, intended for the church of Santo Spirito. Before this, Raphael had also painted the Madonna del cardellino for the Nasi family, wealthy cloth merchants, in which the features of the Virgin, the Christ child and the infant Saint John had a sweetness that some said was inspired by Leonardo’s paintings. Only that none of the works that Leonardo had started in Florence was anywhere near completion, whereas in three years Raphael had finished at least four paintings, all masterpieces.
Such sweetness of expression was a natural attainment for Raphael’s art and indeed it cannot be excluded that even Leonardo was influenced by it during these months. Moving beyond the anatomical studies undertaken by Michelangelo and Leonardo and beyond the latter’s optical studies, Raphael had achieved such a natural harmony of the human body in space – which was based on perfect foreshortening, on careful blending of colours, and especially on gradual alterations of the light – as to give the impression that his figures really were enveloped by moving air. Moreover, the painter had an extraordinary talent for capturing the psychology of his characters, which he combined with such balance in the representation of gestures that, from then on, critics and collectors would find it hard to decide which of these three artists deserved the highest consideration. Isabella d’Este realized this immediately and, although still pestering Leonardo for a painting, she soon turned to Raphael; but with him she was successful.
There are no documents that record a direct meeting in Florence between Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo in the spring of 1506, when all three were in the city, but if by chance such a meeting did occur, it would not have given Leonardo much cause for concern, because his mind was elsewhere, as always. When he came back in the spring of 1508 as a guest of the affluent Maecenas, Baccio Martelli, in order to resolve the disputed inheritance with his half-brothers, Leonardo was still absorbed by anatomy and by the project for his monumental treatise (‘1508, 22 March. Started in Florence in the house of Baccio Martelli’), and whenever he had a free moment he rushed to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, where he was present at the nearmiraculous death of a 100-year-old man whose corpse he immediately dissected. In early 1508 Michelangelo left Florence; and Leonardo, too, relieved at having settled the dispute, got ready to return to Milan. There is no doubt about his expectations. Shortly before his departure, at Easter, he wrote to Francesco Melzi, announcing their future project with childlike enthusiasm:
Good day to you, Messer Francesco. God knows why, of all the letters I have written to you, you have never answered one? Now wait till I come, by God, and I shall make you write so much that perhaps you will regret it.25